Abstract
In 1987, Margaret Battin posed this question to the academic world: "Are there circumstances in which there is a ‘duty to die’ in order to make a cross-generational distribution of limited health care resources more equitable?" Rephrasing this, would any of us, assuming life is still worth living, consider it a duty to refuse medical treatments meant to extend our life span because of the costs these treatments would impose on others? This is a book of essays, twelve in all, written by respected academicians from eleven different institutions. Seven of the essays are sympathetic to Battin’s claim, including one by her, and five are critical of it. The book is the seventeenth annual volume of Biomedical Ethics Reviews.